Punctuation Changes the Meaning

"Oops, 'shouldn't have this bar association logo here, either."

Katrina: The man was a pedophile/murderer.
Tom: Well, if you gotta murder somebody...
Katrina: No, Tom, not a pedophile dash murderer. A pedophile slash murderer!
Tom: Oh no! The way you said "slash" was very scary!

— BoJack Horseman, "lovin that cali lifestyle!!"

Two (or more) sentences are identical in word choice and order, but placement of punctuation changes their meaning. Observe the difference between "Execute not; liberate" and "Execute, not liberate" — one says "don't kill" and the other says "kill". A common grammar joke refers to a comma being the difference between inviting your grandmother to dinner ("Let's eat, Grandma!") versus telling your family to cannibalize her ("let's eat Grandma!").

Someone might add or change existing writing on purpose if they stand to benefit from the modification: for example, making a sign mean the complete opposite thing by adding a few marks. It probably won't stand up as a defense if they get in trouble, though.

Spoken, this is often Ambiguous Syntax. The classic "man-eating plant/man eating plant" isn't so ambiguous when shown in written form, assuming the writer knows how to use a hyphen.

This is often an example of Poor Communication Kills. Might be caused by Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma if someone miswrites or miscopies a sentence. Unnecessary quotation marks will look like Scare Quotes.

This trope is for examples where the meaning of a statement is changed by adding, erasing, or moving punctuation (but the words remain the same), and it has to occur within the work. This trope is not about the audience pointing out grammatical errors. Examples where the ambiguity is not resolved goes under Ambiguous Syntax.

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Examples

Fan Works

• In a bit of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan art by Jargon Scott, Trixie wears a T-shirt with the message "NO FAT CHICKS". In the followup picture, Twilight objects to the shirt and tells Trixie to change it — and Trixie complies by adding a comma and exclamation mark: "NO, FAT CHICKS!"

Film — Animated

• At the climax of the 1969 Soviet animated children's film In The Country Of Unlearned Lessons, the protagonist is faced with a sentence that roughly translates as "pardon impossible to execute", with his fate depending on the proper comma placement: "pardon impossible, to execute" would get his head chopped off, while "pardon, impossible to execute" would return him home unharmed. The sentence is actually a common saying in Russia, going back to the time of Peter The Great, according to the Russian Wikipedia article about it.

Jokes

• In Red Square, 1929, Josef Stalin is addressing a rally. He produces a telegram he claims to have received from his exiled foe, Leon Trotsky, and reads it aloud: "You were right and I was wrong. You are the true heir of Lenin. I should apologize." The crowd dutifully cheers, except for an elderly Jewish man in the front row, who catches Stalin's attention and says that he read the telegram without the right "feeling." Amused, Stalin invites the man up to the podium so he can read it the way he sees fit. The man takes the telegram and reads: "You were right and I was wrong?! You are the true heir of Lenin?! I should apologize?!"
• A class evenly split between men and women are given a sentence and told to punctuate it how they want. The sentence is, "A woman without her man is nothing". After some debate, the men give the following: "A woman, without her man, is nothing." The women then issue a rebuttal. "A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Literature

• 1066 and All That draws attention to the classic punctuation exercise, "Charles the First walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off", pointing out how memorable that would be. The sentence should go, "Charles the First walked and talked; half an hour after, his head was cut off."
• In one of the Anne of Green Gables books young Davy misinterprets a phrase in his catechism. "Why should we love God? Because he makes, preserves and redeems us." Davy misses the comma and believes that God makes jam ("Preserves is just a holy way of saying jam"). Anne must point out that the comma is important in the meaning.
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves teaches the difference between "eats, shoots and leaves" and "eats shoots and leaves". The panda does the former after either misreading a wildlife guide or reading a wildlife guide that included the comma after "eats".
• There's an illustrated version of Eats, Shoots & Leaves for children, with the subtitle Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference! (a bit of self-demonstration that wasn't present in the earlier edition). Each spread includes two sentences with different meanings due to comma placement. The author, Lynne Truss, also wrote The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage Without Apostrophes!, Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, Every Punctuation Mark Counts!, and Eats MORE, Shoots & Leaves: Why, ALL Punctuation Marks Matter!
• Encyclopedia Brown: Tyrone was writing a love letter via dictation over the phone one word at a time, but the punctuation wasn't dictated and turned the message into an insulting letter.
• A passage from the memoir Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson: "Today I interviewed someone who handed me a resume saying that he'd worked at Helping Hand-Jobs. I choked on my own spit and couldn't stop coughing. Later I showed it to the interviewer in the next office. She told me that her brother had worked there once but had quit because all the manual labor had given him heatstroke. After I started coughing again she realized my confusion and explained that it was actually named Helping-Hand Jobs and was a handyman service. Never underestimate the power of punctuation, people."
• Newspaper headlines typically contain no punctuation, hence you sometimes get absurdities like SQUAD HELPS DOG BITE VICTIM. These are sometimes referred to as "crash blossoms," after the syntactically confusing headline "Violinist Linked To JAL Crash Blossoms."

Live-Action TV

• 30 Rock:
  • When Grizz and Dot Com show Tracy his birthday invitations, Tracy notices that they put "Give to charity please! No presents." on the invites. Dot Com says that that's what he told them to put on them. Tracy says that what he meant was "Give to charity? Please, no. Presents!"
  • At one point Jack mentions that the first edition of a book he wrote had a typo. He said "By the end of this quarter, we're all gonna be in the black-comma-guys", not "We're all gonna be in the black guys."
• In Big Time Rush, the hotel manager tried to ban children and teens from swimming in the pool by putting up a sign: "Adult Swim No Kids Allowed." Kendall scribbled on the sign with a marker to make it say "Adult Swim? No, Kids Allowed!" so they can use the pool.
• An episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was about a night club either called Spider's or Spiders. Their advertising wasn't consistent with the apostrophe use, causing Rebecca to wonder if it's a spider-infested club or a club owned by a spider. The sign in front of the club says Spider's.
• Doctor Who: There is an asteroid base that is initially assumed to be named "Demon's Run". As it turns out, it's actually "Demons Run". As in "Demons run when a good man goes to war."
• The Electric Company (1971) has sketch about the importance of punctuation takes place in a courtroom. The plaintiff is a farmer who is charging a man who fished in his pond with trespassing and fishing in a posted no fishing zone. He holds up a sign that he had posted in the pond that says, "PRIVATE PROPERTY NO FISHING ALLOWED." He says he meant the sign to say "Private Property. No Fishing Allowed." The defendant says that since the sign had no punctuation, he assumed that it meant "Private Property? No, Fishing Allowed."
• The Flash: When Savitar says "I am the future, Flash." everyone thinks it's an I Am the Noun Badass Boast. He's actually telling them his identity "I am the future-Flash." As in, he's the Flash from the future.
• In the How I Met Your Mother episode, "The Scorpion and the Toad", Lily reports two versions of the opinion her art teacher gave her piece. The first, which gave a false impression, was, "Oh, my god. This is your best work. In all my years of teaching, I've never seen anything so... Needless to say, this is art! I can't teach you anything." The second, corrected version was "Oh, my god. This is your best work? In all my years of teaching, I've never seen anything so needless. To say this is... art... I can't teach you anything."
• Jonathan Creek: In "The Seer of the Sands", a man named Justin Mallory receives a letter from his girlfriend, who is trying to persuade her estranged husband to agree to a divorce. He reads: "Pressing Rex for a divorce again this morning. He said no, one would have to suffer much longer." This causes him to fly into a rage, get drunk, crash his boat and drown. Had he looked more closely, he would have realized that what he thought was a comma was actually a fly that had landed on the page, and she was actually telling him that Rex had agreed to the split.
• Discussed in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver when covering Chief Justice Roberts' comments on Obamacare, then bringing up a banner used to support the London women's soccer team — "Come On Our Girls!" — pointing out that it really could have used a comma.
• In an episode of Modern Family, Cam and Mitchell received an invitation to a Christmas party from their friend that said, "No presents please." However, Mitchell ran into another friend who tells them that the card should be read, "No presents? Please!", meaning they need to bring presents.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: In the episode The Screaming Skull, after several jokes pointing out that the movie's heroine seems to do more screaming than the eponymous skull, Mike Nelson wonders if the movie was accidentally mistitled:
  Mike: I think the title was supposed to be Screaming; Skull.
• Parks and Recreation: Leslie buys stickers saying "Don't" and "?" to change the "Recall Leslie Knope" signs into "Recall Leslie Knope? Don't," but realizes she can just put the "Don't" in front of the sign. April takes the question mark stickers so she can put them on the end of "STOP" signs, causing Leslie to shout, "April, no!"
• Taskmaster: In the final stage task in Series 2, the instructions went: "Put on a pair of food-handling gloves, eat a whole banana, correctly put on a tie, and clap as many times as possible." After Katherine Ryan, the only female contestant that series, objected to "correctly put on a tie", the comma was moved after "correctly" to make: "Put on a pair of food-handling gloves, eat a whole banana correctly, put on a tie, and clap as many times as possible" so she wouldn't be at a disadvantage.
• Veep: During the Nevada recount in the fifth season, officials review a ballot with no vote but has "Fuck Selina Meyer" written over it. Selina's team is able to have the ballot counted for them by claiming the voter's intent was to say, "Fuck, Selina Meyer!"

Magazines

• A cartoon from The New Yorker has a teacher object to a child's drawing subtitled "Happy Mothers' Day" instead of "Happy Mother's Day." The child clarifies that he has two moms.

Music

• There's a bit of Ambiguous Syntax in the first verse of "Linger" by The Cranberries: "If you could return, don't let it burn, don't let it fade." While at face value, this is a plea for someone to return and not let the relationship fall apart, there's a slight pause after each "don't", so the lyrics can also be interpreted as "don't, let it burn; don't, let it fade", or in other words "don't return, let it burn, let it fade", the complete opposite of the alternate interpretation. The song is from the perspective of a woman who wants her relationship to end due to her partner not taking it seriously, but is still too deeply in love to go through with a breakup herself, so either meaning can work in this context.

Newspaper Comics

• A 2019 Bizarro comic has the purveyor of a hot dog stand with the sign, "Sloppy Joe's Hot Dogs", explaining to someone pointing at the sign that his name is Sloppy Joe and that the apostrophe is correct.
• In a 2017 Pearls Before Swine comic, it's "No Punctuation Day", and Pig declares, "Terrific who needs punctuation" before turning to his uncle Joe (who's holding a basketball) and saying, "Shoot Uncle Joe". Rat does the predictable.

Theatre

• In the "Take a Break" number from Hamilton, Angelica notices that in Alexander's last letter to her she was addressed as "My Dearest, Angelica" rather than simply "My Dearest Angelica".
• In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the introduction to the Show Within a Show, delivered by carpenter Peter Quince, is punctuated so that every sentence means the opposite of what is clearly intended (the implication being that Quince is nervous or just plain bad at line delivery). It's lampshaded by the In-Universe audience.
  If we offend, it is with our good will.
  That you should think, we come not to offend,
  But with good will. To show our simple skill,
  That is the true beginning of our end.
  Consider then we come but in despite.
  We do not come as minding to content you,
  Our true intent is. All for your delight
  We are not here. That you should here repent you,
  The actors are at hand and by their show
  You shall know all that you are like to know.
  

Video Games

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons: When a smug character gives you a gift to give to another villager, he tells you, "No rush", before he corrects himself, saying, "No, rush!"

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue: In The Shisno Paradox, Huggins (a living ball of light) reports to Atlus. Atlus is at first disappointed about the contents of her report:
  Atlus: Then why even bother standing before me?
  Huggins: I can't actually stand, Lord Atlus.
  Genkins: You too?! I can't stand him either!

Webcomics

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: A "relationship tip" recommends clever comma placement to produce honest compliments. Lie: "You have a body like Adonis." Truth: "You have a body, like Adonis."
• In an Eddsworld comic, Tom sees a sign on Edd's bedroom door reading "Edds Room" and remarks on the bad grammar. The room is actually full of clones of Edd.
• There's an xkcd comic about mentally shifting the hyphen whenever someone refers to something as an "[adjective]-ass [noun]". For example, turning "sweet-ass car" into "sweet ass-car".

Websites

• There's a bot on Reddit that takes cues from the xkcd comic by automatically searching for phrases with "[descriptor] ass [thing]" in posts and replying to them with the same phrase but with a hyphen placed after "ass" so it reads, "[descriptor] ass-[thing]".
• A Tumblr post once analyzed that the popular phrase "Fuck bitches, get money" can develop many different meanings based on emphasis and punctuation.
  1. "Fuck bitches, get money" — disregard women and instead focus on aquiring [sic] currency
  2. "Fuck bitches, get money" — have affairs with women and get paid
  3. "Fuck bitches, get money" — disregard women, have an understanding of finances
  4. "Fuck bitches, get money" — have affairs with women and an understanding of finances
  5. "Fuck, bitches get money" — damn, women are getting paid
  6. "Fuck, bitches get money" — damn, women have a profoud [sic] understanding of finances
  7. "Fuck, bitches, get money" — damn it, women, go acquire currency
• Snopes examines the urban legend that a man sued the telegraph company (and won) after they omitted a single comma from his message. According to the story, his wife was on vacation and an expensive piece of jewelry caught her eye, so she sent a message asking if she could buy it. The man replied "No, price too high", but the telegraph operator instead sent the message "No price too high."
• This can occasionally happen with trope names on TV Tropes, thanks to the custom title system which allows punctuation to be added to trope names without altering the URL. For instance, "Stop Having Fun" Guys was originally meant to be the kind of thing that type of person would say: "Stop having fun, guys!" But through custom titling, the name was changed to refer to the kind of people who have that attitude. Likewise, "The Reason You Suck" Speech could just as easily be titled The "Reason You Suck" Speech, which would make the trope an example of Spell My Name with a "The".

Web Video

• Critical Role: Inverted in Campaign 2, where a lack of punctuation changes the meaning. Sam plays a goblin named Nott the Brave. As Nott explains to another character, who assumed she was courageous, "There's no comma. I'm not the brave."

Western Animation

• In The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Shippening", Gumball uses a notebook that magically makes everything drawn/written in it a reality to write a story about Bobert, Tina, and Jamie. When he writes out, "Let's eat Bobert", Darwin asks, "Shouldn't there be a comma before 'Bobert'?" Cut to Tina and Jamie eating Bobert.
• BoJack Horseman: In "lovin that cali lifestyle!!", gubernatorial candidate Woodchuck-Coodchuck Berkowitz runs into a scandal when he receives a hand transplant from a pedophile/murderer (as in, a pedophile and a murderer). When learning about the news, Tom Jumbo-Grumbo assumes the hand donor was a pedophile-murderer (as in, someone who kills pedophiles), until Katrina aggressively corrects him.
• Cow and Chicken: In "Major Wedgie", the eponymous Major goes on a tangent about how pausing at the right time can completely change the meaning of a sentence.
  Major Wedgie: ...Like "What's that in the road... a-head?!" Or "What's for dinner... mom?!"
• In one episode of Family Guy Brian and Stewie go scuba diving, conversing with each other by writing on white boards with markers. At one point, after Brian corrects an error Stewie made, Stewie writes "Don't be a grammar shark." This confuses Brian, until he is attacked by a shark, causing Stewie to add the punctuation to his sentence, so it now reads "Don't be a grammar— Shark!"
• The Simpsons:
  • In "The Day The Violence Died", Bart objects to Amoral Attorney Lionel Hutz's request for money up front, because his card says "Works on Contingency — No Money Down." Hutz hastily claims that it is just a typo and then "corrects" the card by adding punctuation with a sharpie so it reads "Works on Contingency? — No, Money Down!"
  • In "Sweets and Sour Marge", Marge was shopping at the Kwik-E-Mart when she finds a package of what she assumes contains sugar-free donuts, overlooking the comma in the writing on the package (which says "Sugar, Free Donuts") until Apu points it out.
  • In "Barting Over", Lisa finds a videotape titled "Bart Sad", which intrigues her, and so she puts it in the VCR to play. However, when she finds a commercial starring Bart as a baby, she realizes that this should have said "Bart's Ad"

Real Life

• In a 1787 letter from Angelica Church to Alexander Hamilton, she addressed him as "Indeed my dear, Sir?" In his reply, Alexander teasingly pointed out the mislaid comma with "Adieu ma chère, soeur" (trnsl. "Good-bye my dear, sister") since in French the word for "sister" sounds a bit like "sir".
• In 1872, a comma was mistakenly added instead of a hyphen in the US law exempting "fruit, plants, tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation" from import tariffs. Fruit importers filed lawsuits claiming the law exempted all fruit from tariffs rather than just the plants and seeds used to cultivate them. The government eventually refunded $2 million worth of duties, the equivalent of nearly $40 million in 2014.
• In 2018, a Federal Court sided with three drivers from a dairy in Maine in their lawsuit for overtime pay. Maine law made "The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: (1) Agricultural produce; (2) Meat and fish products; and (3) Perishable foods." exempt from overtime. As NPR points out the problem was with "packing for shipment or distribution of" — is this one activity or two that are barred from overtime? The comma cost the dairy $50,000 for each driver in back overtime pay.
• In 2006, the "$2-million comma" allowed Alliant Inc. to end a contract with Rogers Communications early and surprise them with a rate hike. The court agreed that the second comma allowed the contract to be ended during its initial term, which Rogers hadn't intended:
  [The agreement] shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five-year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.
• This case, in which an Ohio court overturned a parking violation of a woman who parked her car in an area that banned parking "any motor vehicle camper, trailer, farm implemented and/or non-motorized vehicle" for more than 24 hours. She argued that her car did not constitute a "motor vehicle camper", and the prosecutor argued that the law should have read "motor vehicle, camper", and that the defendant knew full well what the law actually meant. The court sided with the defendant.
• Czarina Maria Fyodorovna saved a man from life in prison by transposing a single comma in a warrant signed by her husband, Alexander III, which exiled a criminal to imprisonment and death in Siberia. Firmly believing in the man's innocence and with full access to the Czar's office, she took action. On the bottom of the warrant, the Czar had written: "Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia." The Czarina changed the punctuation so that her husband's instructions read: "Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia." The man was set free.
• In 1327, Roger Mortimer, the Earl of March, wanted to kill King Edward II, but did not want to leave incriminating evidence. Assassins demanded a written warrant. Lord March wrote "Nolite Edwardum occidere timere bonum est." which depends on the comma: "Nolite Edwardum occidere, timere bonum est." = "Don't KILL Edward. It is good to fear." "Nolite Edwardum occidere timere, bonum est." = "Don't be AFRAID of killing Edward. All is well."
• A Tweet from the Associated Press read "BREAKING: Dutch military plane carrying bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash lands in Eindhoven." This lead people to believe the plane carrying the bodies had also crashed, which could have been avoided if commas were included: "Dutch military plane, carrying bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash, lands in Eindhoven." Those familiar with AP Style recognized that they would have written "crash-lands" had the military plane crashed.
• When Michael J. Fox joined the Screen Actors Guild, there was already a Michael Fox in the SAG. He thought about using his middle initial "A" (for Andrew), but he wanted to avoid headlines like "Michael, A Fox!" (or "Michael 'Eh?' Fox"), so he adopted the middle initial "J" in homage to actor Michael J. Pollard.
• Pepsi's motto "Live For Now" takes on a darker meaning if you insert a comma: "Live, For Now". Stephen Colbert made this joke on the 8/16/2012 show of The Colbert Report.
• During the 2024 free agency period for the NFL, the lack of moves by the Dallas Cowboys to pursue high-name veteran talent after owner Jerry Jones promised "We are all in", sports columnist - and die-hard Cowboys fan - Skip Bayless tweeted out "All in, my ass." The comma placement immediately became a meme with every other sports columnist expressing gratitude to proper grammar.
  I thank the comma for its service. - Rich Eisen

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